The ability to offer flexible, customizable pricing is a competitive advantage in almost any industry. In the financial transaction account industry, merchants typically pay a transaction fee to payment processors and/or transaction account issuers in exchange for the ability to offer their customers the convenience of paying for purchases using a transaction account, such as a credit card. Traditionally, the transaction fee is a simple calculation of the aggregate transaction amount submitted by the merchant multiplied by a transaction fee rate (e.g. 2.5%).
Existing merchant transaction fee pricing methods typically constrain the ability of payment processors and issuers to provide innovative pricing options that encourage merchants to allow payment using a particular type of financial transaction instrument. Data and processing constraints have typically posed significant technological barriers to offering complex, customized pricing methods. Thus, a long-felt need exists to enhance the flexibility of merchant transaction fee calculations and the granularity of the data available for those calculations and to allow merchants and payment processors to negotiate innovative transaction fee pricing plans.